The Serbian Orthodox Church

The autocephalous church of the Serbian people, born of St. Sava’s mission and the 1219 grant of autocephaly, raised to the Patriarchate of Peć, suppressed and revived across Ottoman and Habsburg rule, unified in 1920, and marked in the 20th century by genocide, communism, and the wounds of Kosovo. This file traces that history and the 2022 resolution of the Macedonian schism, with disputed figures given as named scholarly ranges and dated “as of” notes.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

St. Sava and the Autocephaly of 1219

The Serbian Church was organized by St. Sava (Rastko Nemanjić, c. 1175–1236), son of the Grand Župan Stefan Nemanja (in monasticism St. Symeon), who together founded the monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos. In 1219, Sava obtained from the Ecumenical Patriarch Manuel I — then in exile at Nicaea, Constantinople being under Latin occupation after the Fourth Crusade — recognition of the Serbian Church as autocephalous, and was himself consecrated its first archbishop, with his seat at Žiča (Serbian Orthodox Church; Vladimir Vranić, “Autocephaly of the Serbian Church in 1219 as a Paradigm of Canonical Acquisition of Autocephaly,” OrthoChristian). Sava’s combination of churchly autonomy with the Nemanjić dynasty made him the founding figure of Serbian national and ecclesial identity; his relics were later burned by the Ottomans on Vračar in 1595, the site of the present cathedral of St. Sava in Belgrade.

The Patriarchate of Peć

In 1346, amid the imperial ambitions of Tsar Stefan Dušan, the Serbian archbishopric was elevated to the rank of Patriarchate, seated at Peć (Peć Patriarchate) — a step taken without Constantinople’s initial consent, which led to a temporary schism, healed in 1375. The Peć Patriarchate became the spiritual and cultural backbone of medieval Serbia, presiding over the great monastic foundations of Kosovo and Metohija. After the Ottoman conquest the patriarchate was abolished and restored more than once; revived in 1557 under the patronage of the Ottoman grand vizier Mehmed-paša Sokolović (himself of Serbian origin), it was finally abolished by the Ottomans in 1766, its dioceses placed under the Greek (Phanariot) hierarchy of Constantinople (Serbian Orthodox Church; Patriarchate of Peć).

Ottoman and Habsburg Eras

With Peć suppressed, Serbian Orthodoxy survived under two empires. Under the Ottomans the church was the principal custodian of Serbian identity through the centuries of rule, transmitting the memory of the medieval kingdom — above all the Battle of Kosovo (1389) and the cult of the martyr-prince Lazar — through liturgy, epic song, and the monasteries. This “Kosovo myth,” the choice of the heavenly kingdom over the earthly, became central to Serbian national consciousness and remains entangled with the church’s attachment to Kosovo today.

North of the Danube and Sava, Serbs who had fled into Habsburg lands during the “Great Migrations” of 1690 and 1737 organized the Metropolitanate of Karlovci (Sremski Karlovci), which gained wide ecclesiastical autonomy and became a center of Serbian culture, education, printing, and political life in the 18th–19th centuries. Other jurisdictions emerged with political change: an autonomous, then autocephalous, metropolitanate in the Principality (later Kingdom) of Serbia recognized by Constantinople in 1879; the Metropolitanate of Montenegro under the prince-bishop (vladika) rulers; and dioceses in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dalmatia, and Old Serbia under their respective overlords. On the eve of the 20th century, in short, the Serbian people were one in faith but divided among at least five or six separate Orthodox jurisdictions tracing their lineage to Peć.

The Twentieth Century

Unification (1920). After the First World War and the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia), the scattered Serbian jurisdictions were reunited. The autonomous Metropolitanate of Belgrade had already received full autocephaly from Constantinople on 20 October 1879, following Serbia’s independence in 1878 (Metropolitanate of Belgrade). In 1920 it was merged with the Patriarchate of Karlovci, the Montenegrin metropolitanate, and the dioceses of Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Old Serbia into a single Serbian Orthodox Church, and the patriarchal dignity of Peć was renewed — the Serbian Church becoming again a patriarchate for the first time since 1766 (Serbian Orthodox Church). This unification, completing the political unification of the South Slavs, gave the modern church its present shape.

The NDH genocide (1941–1945). During the Second World War the Axis-installed Independent State of Croatia (NDH), governed by the Ustaša regime, carried out a campaign of mass killing, forced conversion, and expulsion against Serbs (and Jews and Roma), which the church regards as a martyrdom of its people. Estimates of the dead are contested and politicized.

[Disputed: The death toll of the principal camp, Jasenovac, is estimated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at between 77,000 and 99,000 people murdered 1941–1945, of whom the largest group were Serbs; the USHMM gives roughly 45,000–52,000 Serb victims at Jasenovac specifically. Historians Bogoljub Kočović and Vladimir Žerjavić independently arrived at totals near 83,000 for the camp. Higher figures (into the hundreds of thousands or above a million) and far lower ones (as few as a few thousand) have circulated in Serbian and Croatian nationalist polemics respectively; scholars caution that the destruction of records makes precision impossible (USHMM, “Jasenovac”; Balkan Insight, “Croatia’s Jasenovac Death Toll: A Political Numbers Game,” 2018).]

The clergy were directly targeted: of the 577 Serbian Orthodox priests, monks, and dignitaries in the NDH in April 1941, between 214 and 217 were killed and over 330 exiled, leaving none in the territory by December and the church’s structure in the NDH effectively destroyed within a single year (USHMM and “Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia”). The church venerates many of these as New Martyrs, among them Bishop Platon of Banja Luka and Bishop Sava (Trlajić) of Gornji Karlovac, glorified by the Serbian Church in 1998. The genocide of this period remains central to how the Serbian Church understands its 20th-century history, and the contested death tolls are a continuing source of friction with Croatia.

The communist era. Postwar socialist Yugoslavia subjected the church to confiscations, marginalization, and surveillance. The church endured under restricted conditions and suffered a further blow in 1967 when clergy in the southern republic unilaterally proclaimed a Macedonian Orthodox Church, which the Serbian Church and the wider Orthodox world treated as schismatic (see below).

Kosovo

Kosovo and Metohija hold the spiritual heart of medieval Serbian Orthodoxy: the Patriarchate of Peć, the monasteries of Visoki Dečani, Gračanica, and the Patriarchate of Peć and Our Lady of Ljeviša — four of which form the UNESCO World Heritage site “Medieval Monuments in Kosovo,” inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2006.

These sites were repeatedly attacked. The International Center for Transitional Justice records that 155 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed by Kosovo Albanians between June 1999 and March 2004; during the March 2004 violence the Serbian Orthodox Church reported that some 30 churches and shrines were destroyed or heavily damaged in two days, with all Serbian churches in Prizren destroyed, and KFOR troops defending Visoki Dečani from an attacking crowd (Destruction of Serbian heritage in Kosovo; Visoki Dečani, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 2 July 2004). The church’s position, articulated by the Diocese of Raška-Prizren under Bishop Teodosije, is that the monasteries are inalienable Serbian spiritual patrimony and that their monks remain in place under protection; the church has consistently opposed Kosovo’s unilateral 2008 declaration of independence and resisted measures it views as encroaching on monastery lands (Diocese of Raška-Prizren / Visoki Dečani communiqués). As of 2026 the heritage sites remain protected but contested, and the church maintains a continuous monastic presence.

The 2022 Resolution of the Macedonian Schism

The 1967 unilateral declaration of a Macedonian Orthodox Church created a schism that isolated that body from world Orthodoxy for half a century. It was resolved in 2022 in coordinated steps. In May 2022 the Ecumenical Patriarchate received the church into communion under the name “Ohrid” (Archbishopric of Ohrid); then the Serbian Orthodox Church reconciled with it and, on 16 May 2022, the Serbian Holy Synod granted it autocephaly, with Patriarch Porfirije of Serbia delivering the tomos to Archbishop Stefan on 5 June 2022 (Macedonian Orthodox Church; OrthoChristian and China-CEE Institute coverage, 2022).

[Disputed: The name and the path remain partly contested. Constantinople received the church as the “Archbishopric of Ohrid,” declining the name “Macedonian,” while the church in North Macedonia and the Serbian tomos use “Macedonian Orthodox Church–Ohrid Archbishopric”; the autocephaly was granted by Serbia rather than by Constantinople, and its universal recognition has proceeded church by church (recognized by Poland in October 2022, the OCU in November 2022, Bulgaria in December 2022, and Romania and the Czech-Slovak church in February 2023). As of 2026 the autocephaly is recognized by a number of churches but its status and name are not uniformly accepted across all of world Orthodoxy.]

Contemporary Leadership and Montenegro

The church is led by the Patriarch of Serbia, seated in Belgrade. Patriarch Irinej (Gavrilović) died on 20 November 2020 at age 90 of COVID-19 complications, weeks after presiding over the funeral of Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro, who had likewise died of the disease; the Council of Bishops elected Patriarch Porfirije (Perić) on 18 February 2021 (Balkan Insight, “Serbian Church Elects Patriarch Deemed Close to President,” 2021). It was Porfirije who delivered the Macedonian tomos in 2022 (below).

A live front for the church is Montenegro, where it administers the great majority of Orthodox parishes and monasteries through its Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral. A 2019 Montenegrin religious-property law — requiring proof of pre-1918 ownership — was read by the church as a threat to transfer its properties to the small, state-favored, and canonically unrecognized “Montenegrin Orthodox Church,” and provoked mass clergy-led processions; the dispute over property and identity in Montenegro continues as of 2026 (Porfirije; reporting on the 2019 Montenegro property law).

Diaspora and the ROCOR Refuge

The Serbian Church established dioceses across Western Europe, the Americas, and Australasia to serve emigrants and, after 1945, political refugees. Its history is interwoven with that of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR): when the White Russian émigré hierarchy fled the Bolshevik revolution, it was the Serbian Church that gave it sanctuary, hosting the foundational 1921 council of the Russian exiles at Sremski Karlovci — the former seat of the Serbian Karlovci metropolitanate — and providing ecclesiastical hospitality through the interwar years (see ../../05-rocor/history/formation-and-karlovci.md). This Serbian refuge for the Russian émigré church is the origin of ROCOR’s early designation as the “Karlovci Synod.”

See Also

• ROCOR: Formation and Karlovci — the Russian émigré church sheltered by Serbia at Sremski Karlovci
• The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople — which granted Serbian autocephaly in 1219
• Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem — the ancient Eastern patriarchates
• Romania — a neighboring Balkan patriarchate
• Georgia — another ancient autocephalous church
• Greece, Bulgaria, and Others — including the recognition of the Ohrid Archbishopric
• The Ottoman Period — the suppression of the Peć Patriarchate in 1766
• Ukraine Autocephaly and the 2018 Schism — the wider autocephaly debate

References

• “Serbian Orthodox Church” and Britannica, “Serbian Orthodox Church” (1219 autocephaly under St. Sava via Patriarch Manuel I at Nicaea; Peć raised to patriarchate 1346; abolished by Ottomans 1766; modern church unified 1920); “Metropolitanate of Belgrade” (autonomy 1831, autocephaly 20 October 1879).
• Balkan Insight, “Serbian Church Elects Patriarch Deemed Close to President,” 18 February 2021; “Porfirije, Serbian Patriarch” (death of Patriarch Irinej 20 November 2020 of COVID-19; election of Porfirije; 2019 Montenegro religious-property law).
• Rev. Vladimir Vranić, “Autocephaly of the Serbian Church in 1219 as a Paradigm of Canonical Acquisition of Autocephaly,” OrthoChristian / Orthodox Christian Laity.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Jasenovac” (Jasenovac toll 77,000–99,000; Serb victims c. 45,000–52,000; clergy killed); “Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia.”
• Balkan Insight, “Croatia’s Jasenovac Death Toll: A Political Numbers Game,” 31 January 2018 (range of contested figures).
• “Platon of Banja Luka” and “Sava Trlajić” (glorified as New Martyrs by the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 1998).
• “Destruction of Serbian heritage in Kosovo” and “Visoki Dečani” (ICTJ figure of 155 sites destroyed 1999–2004; March 2004 destruction; UNESCO inscription 2 July 2004; World Heritage in Danger 2006); Diocese of Raška-Prizren / Visoki Dečani communiqués (decani.org).
• “Macedonian Orthodox Church”; OrthoChristian, “Read the Full Text of the Tomos of Autocephaly of the Macedonian Orthodox Church”; China-CEE Institute, “The Recognition of the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Archdiocese of Ohrid,” 2022 (Constantinople reception May 2022; Serbian autocephaly 16 May 2022; tomos delivered 5 June 2022; subsequent recognitions).